I left the kitchen and took a walk in the cool morning air. All was well with the world. Minerva had slept and had learned that a night in the country was not fatal and Miss Pussy had recovered her equanimity. I sought for an appetite in the pine woods, and I found one.
CHAPTER II
MINERVA STUDIES NATURE.
I BLESSED Heaven for the lovely day that had come to us. If it had been rainy or even gray we should have had a hard time to keep Minerva. But even a hidebound cockney like herself could tolerate the sweetness of the air and the softness of the clouds and the brightness of the sun.
Ethel made cake so that she could be in the kitchen. I did not exactly approve of it, because the day was meant to be spent in the open, and I wanted to swing hammocks out in the pine woods and read a new novel which had been recommended to me as excellent for reading aloud, but I well knew the wisdom of getting Minerva started right, and I dare say that Ethel’s amiable conversation made her forget that the cook on the “other side of the hall” was nearly two hundred miles away.
At lunch time, Ethel looked very much heated and worn, and I said to myself, “Better me in the kitchen making impossible cake and regaling Minerva with anecdotes than Ethel neutralizing all the effects of this delicious country air in her efforts to keep our cook contented.” So, after lunch, I put up the hammocks and then I insisted on Ethel’s taking her embroidery and coming out to the woods.
“And what will Minerva do? She is afraid of the crickets, and I dare not leave her all the afternoon alone until she is acclimated.”
“No, of course she can’t be left. I didn’t intend her to be left. I will go and learn how to make bread, or, better still, I will paint the floor. Doesn’t the floor need painting?”
“Now, Philip, don’t be foolish. Of course you can’t stay in the kitchen. It’s no place for a man—”
“Nor is it any place for a woman who has come to the country for her health. And yet Minerva won’t stay here alone. What’s to be done?”